Projects

Learning Mechanisms involved in language learning

In a Vrije Competitie project called Segments and rules: a comparative study into the computational mechanisms underlying language acquisition (until May 2017), Carel ten Cate (Behavioral Biology), Jelle Zuidema (Computational Linguistics, UvA) and I study to what extent the learning mechanisms necessary for acquiring language are shared with other non-human animals, specifically zebra finches.

This is done by ways of a series of similar rule learning experiments with human infants, adults and zebra finches. A computational model is developed which takes into account the different factors that either facilitate or impede rule learning.